Monday, October 12, 2009

During my time at Mills College, I wrote my MFA thesis on The Use of Sound For Control, Healing and Empowerment, and have often thought about expanding or updating it many times in the last few years. I found, however, that the more I learned, the more questions it raised, and the more implications of major "classified" warfare applications I came across. While my thesis gave examples of some of the military applications of sound, as well as subliminal audio in public spaces and broadcast signals, I also ran into a lot of conflicting data, and particularly denials that any such activity was happening, or even possible; for example I would find de-classified research from the CIA showing they had a strong interest in subliminal audio influence, post WWII, but mainstream newspaper articles down-playing it and calling it nonsense. I also found that some of the more metaphysically-oriented elements of "sound healing" research I had studied in school really did not seem to have much "proof" to them, or provide any method to verify their validity; for example, there are multiple schools of thought in assigning different tones or frequencies to the "chakras" or energy centers in the body, but the actual source for this data is totally obscured in history, and may have come from a totally non-scientific, or just intuitive/"channeled" source. So, on one hand we have the military applications of sound being essentially covered-up, downplayed or unreported, and we have the "sound healing" applications muddied with lots of vague, spiritually-oriented data that do not necessarily have any scientific validation behind them (although most proponents of sound healing would tell you they simply haven't been scientifically validated YET, and practical evidence suggests there is "something to it"). I was left feeling like it would take a whole book to fully research and explain all the various viewpoints involved, and even then I suspected that the questions would not be answered. And so, I was excited to find a link to Steve Goodman's blog for his upcoming book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect And The Ecology Of Fear. Goodman is the founder of the innovative Hyperdub label, widely credited with bringing dubstep to the global stage, and a solo artist under the name Kode 9. Goodman is also a musicologist and sonic researcher, and has turned his focus to the military uses of sound. He also posts regular articles and videos on his blog, and has even referenced some of the same articles I came across in my own research at Mills. I am glad someone has taken on such a massive, and relatively "dark", subject and I look forward to seeing what he's uncovered, and his conclusions. The book is available for pre-order online and is printing at the end of December.

The trickster in this case is Court TV, which is drawing on some cutting-edge creepiness to make it seem like someone is talking to you - and only you.

The effect is achieved by focusing a beam of sound much like a laser. Someone standing in the beam can hear the voice loud and clear, while someone standing just two feet away can't.

Court TV has installed the sound devices, dubbed the "mystery whisperer," in a number of bookstores to promote its upcoming crime series, "Murder by the Book," narrated by popular crime authors such as James Ellroy and Jonathan Kellerman.

So don't be surprised if you're walking through the mystery section and you suddenly hear a voice come out of nowhere.

There are also plans to install the devices in the Time Warner Center.

The technology has been in use for years - mostly for military applications - but the brains behind the "audiobeam" predicted it would eventually move into the commercial realm.

Advertising seemed like a natural fit. Supermarkets and stores could beam product enticements at passersby with little or no ambient noise to annoy others nearby.

Someday the pitches could even be customized for each customer.

The technology may sound a little scary - almost Big Brother to some - but Zoom said there have been no complaints from either bookstore owners or customers.

Most people seem intrigued if a little perplexed.

Zoom has stationed observers, who pretend to read for hours, at several locations to gauge the customer reaction as they try to figure out the sound.

"They smile, they step into [the beam] and then back out again," said Patrick West, a vice president at Zoom.

Court TV and Zoom also put up poster displays to tip off consumers that it is part of an ad campaign.

If they can't figure it out or continue to hear voices, then the audio ad offers up some sound advice at the end.

"If you continue to hear a voice after walking away, please seek help immediately."

I referenced an article from Scotsman from 2002 in my MFA thesis on The Use Of Sound For Control, Healing and Empowerment. It sounds like the exact same technology.

In 2002, Woody Norris, the CEO of American Technology Corporation, announced the development of a sonic weapon for the Pentagon, which fires “sonic bullets.” The demonstration model of the device resembles a large stereo speaker and uses a “hypersonic sound system” which projects two beams of ultrasonic frequency, which act as a laser-precise carrier over which a 140dB sound is projected. The sound will only be heard by the target the beam is projected at, while those outside the beam would hear nothing. To the target, the sound would be about as loud as being under a jet engine taking off. A selection of 50 sound tracks is available to the operator, one of the most powerful being the sound of a baby crying, played backwards. Norris explained, “[For] most people, even if they plug their ears, it will produce the equivalent of an instant migraine. Some people, it will knock them on their knees (“Sound To Make An Army Flee”).”

American Technology Corporation has also developed another device using their Hypersonic Sound System, which has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Installed in a vending machine, vendor display or advertisement, directional sound can be projected so that when a consumer passes by they hear a sound, message or advertisement, silent to other shoppers around them. Norris demonstrated the device at a mall near his office, directing it at passers-by, who all stopped to listen when the sound was directed at them. One woman was quoted as saying, “That is absolutely amazing. It sounds like the sound is inside your head (“Sound To Make An Army Flee”).” A popular soda company is planning to install the directional sound device in their vending machines, so that approaching customers will hear the sound of soda being poured over ice.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Doctors are using a pioneering new technique which destroys tumours using nothing more than loud noise.

Using a powerful beam of ultrasound they are able to zap diseased tissue without leaving a scar, writes Sky News Health Correspondent Thomas Moore.

It is being tested on women suffering from fibroids, who would once have had to have a hysterectomy.

The sound is too high pitched for the human ear to hear, and there is no radiation, no toxic chemotherapy, and no scar.

Shirley Coombs had been lined up for a hysterectomy. She has fibroids - benign tumours that grow in the womb and affect one in three women.

But with high powered ultrasound doctors will zap the growths and leave her womb intact. She will be able to have children.

"I like the idea of leaving everything intact. I can carry on with my life rather than be laid up for 4 to 6 weeks with a hysterectomy."

The new zap-while-you-scan technique allows doctors to blast tumours with unprecedented precision.

How machine works

Patients lie, face down, in an MRI scanner. Doctors outline the tumour on high-resolution images of the body.

Then they zap the target, using a dish of water as a lens to focus a beam of ultrasound down to a tiny point. In just one second they heat cells to 55 degrees, and watch the scan as the tissue is destroyed.

For Professor Wladyslaw Gedroyc there are benefits on both sides: "We can treat patients in a single session. They walk in, they walk out. There is no bed stay, there are no scars, and no more unpleasant surgical complications."

The beam is 10,000 times more powerful than the ultrasound used to scan pregnant women. Yet it's only a few millimeters across, allowing doctors to destroy diseased tissue, without harming healthy cells.

Trials at St Mary's Hospital in London show significant improvements in 80 per cent of women.

For now the zapper is the only one of its kind in the country.

But the doctors say their results speak for themselves. And in time patients around the country will have their tumours obliterated using nothing more than the power of sound.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

"The war between teens and authority figures has a new -- or old -- front:ears. British shopkeepers tired of teenage loiterers have turned to theMosquito teen repellent, which emits a high-pitch frequency that most teenagerscan hear -- but not most adults."

" The Mosquito ultrasonic teenage deterrent is the solution to the eternal problem of unwanted gatherings of youths and teenagers in shopping malls, around shops and anywhere else they are causing problems. The presence of these teenagers discourages genuine shoppers and customers’ from coming into your shop, affecting your turnover and profits. Anti social behavior has become the biggest threat to private property over the last decade and there has been no effective deterrent until now.

Acclaimed by the Police forces of many areas of the United Kingdom, the Mosquito ultrasonic teenage deterrent has been described as “the most effective tool in our fight against anti social behaviour”. Shop keepers around the world have purchased the device to move along unwanted gatherings of teenagers and anti social youths. Railway companies have placed the device to discourage youths from spraying graffiti on their trains and the walls of stations. "

(Note also that many shops in America, including Old Navy, have been using subliminals in their store music CDs to discourage shop lifting since at least the late '90s. What else is "embedded" in these frequencies?)

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Sometimes I am just amazed by what people have managed to track down and put on the internet. Did you know that trauma-based mind control was discussed by a professional therapist at the Presidential Hearings on Radiation Experiments in Washington, DC back in 1995?

"Valerie Wolf, a therapist and two of her clients, Claudia Mullen and Chris Denicola. God only knows how they got in and testified. I have heard the story from Valerie, and I still don't even believe it, but ... basically she told me the screener up there, the person who was screening applicants to speak about cruel and unusual radiation experiments on Americans ... she said, well I have clients and they are saying that some of these doctors who administered radiation, administered mind control to them so we want to talk. And they said okay. They testified, from what I can gather, for a very short period of time verbally. They submitted a lot of testimony to the Committee from other therapists and other patients, and they somehow got in ... nobody knows how ... but they got in and that opens a certain kind of door for us, because it puts it on the record and it gives it a certain legitimacy and what these patients essentially said was, from the time they were 4 years old, 7 years old, they were tortured by the CIA and the military. You can call it something more sophisticated, but it really isn't. It involved electroshock, physical torture, lights, spinning tables, hallucinogenic drugs, sleep deprivation, isolation tanks, hypnosis, mind programming with commands, layers of trauma that induced buffer zones of amnesia between the traumas, and essentially thereby created multiple personalities. As one psychological theory has it, if you induce enough trauma, you get a split in the personality because the person can't face the pain, so they put that part out of it, and they come with a new personality. If you keep doing it, you invoke or create different personalities, and then if you are the CIA you try to program these sub-personalities to do different things like memorize information photographically and not remember it, do courier operations, assassinations, sex agents, blackmail operations, all of this."

from http://www.tulanelink.com/mind/testimony_04a.htm:"On March 15, 1995, New Orleans clinical social worker Valerie B. Wolf and two of her clients, Claudia S. Mullen and Chris deNicola Ebner appeared before President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in Washington, D.C. to testify on Mind Control Experimentation on Children.

Two developments in the aftermath of the above hearings may be noted. One was formation of the Advocacy Committee for Human Experimentation Survivors - Mind Control (ACHES-MC), a group of professionals, military veterans and program survivors who have pressed the U.S. and Canadian governments to further declassify records and conduct a full scale investigation of their human mind control experimentation and covert mind control operations. The group's efforts appear to have attracted little media attention or governmental action (see: http://www.aches-mc.org).

The other development was emergence of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), a group whose activity is based on established knowledge that memories tend to be error prone, that false memories can be implanted into susceptible patients by artful practitioners, and that false memories have been used to make false accusations. One of the Foundation's apparent objectives is to discredit individuals and their therapists who claim to have recovered suppressed memories of childhood abuse and trauma of the type disclosed by the testimony of Valerie Wolf and her clients. The advisory board of the Foundation includes psychiatrists and associates with ties to persons connected with the covert mind control projects funded by U.S. government agencies, including the CIA. (See: Interview of Colin Ross by station CKLN-FM, Toronto, http://mindcontrolforums.com/radio/ckln02.htm.)

According to the investigation conducted by U.S. News and World Report: “Most of the MKULTRA documents were destroyed in 1973 on orders of then CIA Director Richard Helms, and the records that do remain do not contain the names of human subjects used in most of the tests. But they do clearly suggest that hundreds of people were subjected to experiments funded by the CIA and carried out at universities, prisons, mental hospitals, and drug rehabilitation centers.” (See: Stephen Budiansky, Erica E. Goode and Ted Gest, "The Cold War Experiments," U.S. News and World Report, January 24, 1994, p. 32.)"